The Monmouth County Sheriff's Office won an award from trade magazine "Government Security News" for its ongoing efforts to coordinate emergency communications throughout its 51 municipalities.
(Cynthia Scott / Monmouth County Sheriff's Office)

The Monmouth County Sheriff’s office displayed aptitude in each during its Hurricane Sandy response, and is using all of those talents in designing and building its new 9-1-1 Communication Center, Adrian Courtenay, managing partner of Government Security News magazine, said.

“This is the era where we now have to get more done for less, so we’re looking for who can be most creative with technology and the resources at hand,” Courtenay said. “It’s really impressive what he has done here, this is such an ambitious undertaking.”

Courtenay toured the new facility to present Sheriff Shaun Golden with the magazine’s Most Notable Municipal/County Security Program Gold Award Thursday afternoon.

"You're increasing the security of Monmouth County by having a more centralized communications center," Courtenay said. "You're really ahead of the curve here."

Golden spoke proudly of the new center while overlooking the phone banks and computer screens soon-to-be occupied by 9-1-1 operators.

“One thing we embarked on was tying police departments in with high speed internet so we could exchange data,” Golden said. “We standardized our platforms to allow us to monitor real time calls, and now we’re delivering that to the EMS and fire personnel.”

Courtenay said that New Jersey, and Monmouth County in particular, presents coordination challenges to emergency officials.

“Just driving down here I am going through all these communities, there are so many townships,” Courtenay said. “You have a lot of different organizations in the county, it is crazy for them to all have communications headquarters of their own. Gov. Chris Christie advocated regionalization, and Sheriff Golden has responded.”

Golden said the county was working on coordination independent from the new building, and improving its emergency response resources.

“We had no mass casualty response team or search and rescue team,” Golden said. “We didn’t have urban search and rescue, Fort Monmouth closed and the county was relying on them or outside resources for emergency response. We’ve realized that in a major emergency, like Hurricane Sandy, which affected seven counties, they’re not coming. We have to be better prepared.”

While the Sheriff’s ongoing efforts to coordinate communications earned him the nod, Courtenay said the local response to Hurricane Sandy also impressed the award’s judges.

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“It is so important, having everybody – every responder and every agency - on the same page, and that is what is happening here,” Courtenay said. “Humans are a clever species, and this is an example of that.”

In the future, the 9-1-1 Communication Center will help the county better coordinate its emergency response, Golden said.

“It would if been nice if we could have been in this facility during Sandy,” Golden said.

The magazine has given the award for the last five years, Courtenay said.

Government Security News is a New York-based trade publication that circulates among professionals in the security industry.

This year, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office was selected from among a dozen nominees.